Nowadays it is not all that uncommon for unprotected road-users to end up between the wheels or sets of wheels of a heavier vehicle or right under the vehicle, causing not only severe damage to the vehicle they are traveling on but also serious injury to the road-users themselves.
There are now various types of side underrun protections on the market designed to prevent or reduce the injurious effects of such collisions. However, these hitherto known side underrun protections have various disadvantages. Among other things they are difficult to remove when a driver of a heavy vehicle, in the event of a puncture, for example, has to release a spare wheel which is situated behind the side underrun protection, for example, or if the side underrun protection for other reasons has to be removed or adjusted for better access under the vehicle. According to some known solutions a number of pins and/or bolts have to be removed in order to be able to release the side underrun protection and these fixing arrangements are often difficult to manipulate due, among other things, to the dirt etc. which is always deposited on the chassis of the vehicles and also on the actual side underrun protections.
Current side underrun protection is generally also fixedly mounted and does not allow the entire side underrun protection or parts thereof to be readily adjusted in any way. This may be relevant if the vehicle has to be maneuvered on uneven ground, for example on minor forest roads or on a construction site. Since a side underrun protection may be fitted relatively low down, at a height corresponding to the front of an automobile, there is a risk of it catching on the ground if there are hollows and bumps, resulting in damage to the side underrun protection.
There may also be a need to be able to adjust an upper section vertically, for example on a vehicle with interchangeable bodies, in order to make the distance between the side underrun protection and the interchangeable body conform to any statutory requirements.
The object of the present invention is to eliminate these known problems and provide a side underrun protection comprising at least one individually adjustable section, which through very simple operations can be vertically and/or longitudinally adjusted on the brackets supporting it on the vehicle in question.